Be­cause of Mr Fried­man’s public sta­tus, his for­mer wife’s plight has be­come the sub­ject of a large so­cial me­dia cam­paign di­rected at the con­gress­man and led by the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for the Res­o­lu­tion of Agunot.

Mr Camp, a pow­er­ful player in Wash- in­g­ton DC be­cause of his role as chair­man of the House Ways and Means Com­mit­tee, has re­fused to con­demn Mr Fried­man and dis­missed the is­sue as “gos­sip”.

Ear­lier this year, Mr Camp dis­abled com­ments on his Face­book page af­ter sup­port­ers of Ms Ep­stein cov­ered it in mes­sages call­ing for him to take ac­tion. There has also been Twit­ter and phone cam­paigns and more than 5,700 peo­ple have signed a pe­ti­tion call­ing for Mr Camp to stop sup­port­ing Mr Fried­man.